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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

My system is experiencing pauses of 5-10seconds every 30 to 50 seconds. Nothing is updated graphically, although keyboard input is still accepted. The system monitor shows no spikes of long duration in CPU activity.

I'm not a good sysadmin, but I do know to look to dmesg, and it shows some relevant info, which I've highlighted below. I left all the other junk because I didn't trust myself to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I should say explicitly that /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd are IDE ROM drives, hdc being a DVD-ROM and hdd being a DVD-R/RW.

I couldn't unmount or open the hdd drive, so I rebooted and opened the drive. Therein was a DVD+R of digital photographs I'd laid in the drive. Now that the system is back up, no more pauses.

So no problem to solve, except my curiosity. What's the problem here? I can understand that the filesystem may be unreadable for Debian. I burned it under Windows with Nero without paying much heed to compatibility. But why should the system behave this way? If it can't read after trying once or twice, shouldn't it produce a notification instead of mysteriously causing practically the whole system to constantly pause?